The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 eBook

moved our gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an
adversary, that cared not a button for the merits
of the question, by merely laying his hand upon the
head of the stationer, and desiring him to be calm
(your tall disputants have always the advantage), with
a provoking sneer carry the argument clean from him
in the opinion of all the bystanders, who have gone
away clearly convinced that Titubus must have been
in the wrong, because he was in a passion; and that
Mr.——­, meaning his opponent, is
one of the fairest, and at the same time one of the
most dispassionate arguers breathing.

VIII.—­THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT BEAR A
TRANSLATION

The same might be said of the wittiest local allusions.
A custom is sometimes as difficult to explain to a
foreigner as a pun. What would become of a great
part of the wit of the last age, if it were tried by
this test? How would certain topics, as aldermanity,
cuckoldry, have sounded to a Terentian auditory, though
Terence himself had been alive to translate them?
Senator urbanus, with Curruca to boot
for a synonime, would but faintly have done the business.
Words, involving notions, are hard enough to render;
it is too much to expect us to translate a sound,
and give an elegant version to a jingle. The
Virgilian harmony is not translatable, but by substituting
harmonious sounds in another language for it.
To Latinise a pun, we must seek a pun in Latin, that
will answer to it; as, to give an idea of the double
endings in Hudibras, we must have recourse to a similar
practice in the old monkish doggrel. Dennis, the
fiercest oppugner of puns in ancient or modern times,
professes himself highly tickled with the “a
stick” chiming to “ecclesiastic.”
Yet what is this but a species of pun, a verbal consonance?

IX.—­THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST

If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and
startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound
by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol
let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
It is an antic which does not stand upon manners,
but comes bounding into the presence, and does not
show the less comic for being dragged in sometimes
by the head and shoulders. What though it limp
a little, or prove defective in one leg—­all
the better. A pun may easily be too curious and
artificial. Who has not at one time or other been
at a party of professors (himself perhaps an old offender
in that line), where, after ringing a round of the
most ingenious conceits, every man contributing his
shot, and some there the most expert shooters of the
day; after making a poor word run the gauntlet
till it is ready to drop; after hunting and winding
it through all the possible ambages of similar sounds;
after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it, till
the very milk of it will not yield a drop further,—­suddenly